A viewer asks: “Here’s a question of a timely nature considering that tonight is the first night of the Jewish Passover. The Old Testament Book of Exodus, chapter 12, mentions the institution of the Passover rituals, including instructions to mark the doorposts of the lintels of the Jewish households with the blood of sacrificial lambs. This would then signify to the Lord that it was a Jewish home so that he would spare them from the slaying of the firstborn throughout the land. The firstborn of the Egyptians’ and livestock would be killed but those of the Children of Israel would be spared. Were these killings and the plagues mentioned in Exodus really visited on the land by the Divine?” What can Creator tell us?

We must take caution when asked to vet sacred teachings that may have been corrupted, misunderstood, or even misrepresent the truth of what happened historically and its true meaning in terms of who was involved, what were their motivations, and who was served by what unfolded. The Bible has many truths and many corruptions as well. The problem is, an attempt at selective editing will cause disenchantment and encourage people to falsely lose faith in the Bible when it does have much truth and, after all, is one of the few lines of evidence widely agreed on in support of the reality of the divine. There is much doubt and negativity already from the encroachment of the Secular Movement encouraging people to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak, because some things in the Bible seem overly harsh, out of divine alignment, or wildly improbable and, if anything, a kind of embarrassment for believers. This, of course, is quite unfair. Some of the most wildly improbable things in the Bible are accurately reported and literally true, but those things which are not will be reinforcing oftentimes a much darker view of the divine, that God is judgmental and has been a force behind many killings in the name of the divine. This goes on today with the so-called "holy wars" which are uniformly a perversion of thinking. So we do not like to revisit or stand behind anything from the Scriptures that supports the idea of a vengeful God visiting retribution on transgressors. While that is a consequence brought by the Law of Karma, that is quite different than mounting a personal vendetta, as in this case, directed at innocent babies who happen to be born in the wrong household when the very notion is abhorrent to anyone with a heart. We would say this example from the Scriptures illustrates perfectly how easily people can embrace faulty notions of the divine and our motives and, when that happens and it is allowed to persist through reinforcement, will only perpetuate ideas like "vengeance" and "holy wars" on a continual basis to perpetuate human suffering.